


If Age Begets Wisdom

by kanadka



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Character Death Fix, M/M, Post-Canon, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 23:37:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5947564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/pseuds/kanadka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Montparnasse returns to Paris to find Gavroche has grown up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Age Begets Wisdom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nisiedraws](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisiedraws/gifts).



> Treat for [chocolatebox2015](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/chocolatebox2015/). I saw this amazing prompt and was like holy mother god _yes_. Haven't seen any musicals or the movie, just Brick, so I hope it's florid and ridiculous enough to sound like what would happen if Hugo wrote porn of his precious innocent rebellion child being ruthlessly deflowered by his criminal-gang's dandy cutthroat. Maybe this will make him spin faster in his grave. That is what he gets for killing off Gavroche.

**I: The Gamin Re-examined In His Later Years**

Gavroche has always reminded Montparnasse of a younger version of himself, and this is why Montparnasse had sought him out for jobs. It is a bit vain and narcissistic of him. Montparnasse is not so foolish to ignore these aspects of himself. Neither is he foolish enough to think that he possessed an inkling of the magnitude of Gavroche's warmth. As a matter of fact the opposite is true, he knows himself quite villainous, and under his finery he is a moral wretch. But Montparnasse was gamin once, before he became dandy, before he became cruel. And so he had found something of a kindred spirit.

Montparnasse returns to his old haunts and neighbourhoods in Paris to find that his recollection of the boy requires some updating. He finds a healthy sproutling in place of the seed that a few years past assisted the revolutionaries. (This continues to elude Montparnasse. Aiding Montparnasse made sense. Montparnasse fed him a brioche here, tossed him a sou there. Why should anyone waste their breath and risk their skin for impoverished students who have doomed themselves? But perhaps it is the anarchy of the thing which had so inflamed him. That, Montparnasse could understand. Illegalities for their own sake.)

Gavroche is still innocent, gaminesque, he grins and sings in the streets with no money, no home and no cares, but possessing an edge of maturity. The streets have made him smarter.

The streets have also made him beautiful.

Gavroche is the special kind of dandy that has not yet realised the potential for true foppish dandyism. The most noteworthy differences: he does not dress like one, and he is filthy, both his face and clothes. But altogether flirtatious are the cocky slant of his hips, upon which his trousers hang low, those slim shoulders like smooth billiard balls glimpsed through the tatters of linen he calls a shirt, those giddy cheeks flushed rose with the chill of winter in Paris, an unknowing Ganymede plucked from the heavens.

But Gavroche has nowhere else to sleep except the street, and if his svelte figure demonstrates that he can hardly afford food, then he cannot afford lodging; and he most certainly cannot afford to costume himself in a fine tall hat, a modern coat, shined shoes with fashionable buckles, handsome pressed trousers, a satin waistcoat from which bursts a bright whip of a cravat, tacked to a crisp new shirt with a gleaming pin. Unlike for Montparnasse, they are ranked for Gavroche in such an order: food, then a roof, then beauty, if beauty at all draws Gavroche's notice.

If Gavroche paid any attention to beauty, if he cared to gather money and keep it until he could spend it on his raiment, he could turn heads so sharply he would break necks.

Soon he will come to realise, believes Montparnasse, that he is not so young anymore. That the natural coat-warmth of a child is tight on the youth and outgrown by the young man. That in winter one must take refuge at night from the streets. That there are no more statues quite so large for a grown boy. That the spriteliness of a gamin is tolerated only until a certain age, after which the police interfere. That occupations for a gamin after years of care-freedom are few; vagabondage or crime, both leading to prison. That Gavroche will never leave Paris for the life of a tramp and is resourceful enough to escape the clutches of imprisonment, which makes his destiny clear. That Montparnasse's return to Paris makes his destiny even clearer. Soon, perhaps, he will notice those pretty young women, who have a warm bed and all comforts at home waiting for them at night, and he shall see them as Montparnasse sees them.

As prey.

And _then_ Gavroche will begin to care about beauty.

But there are two more noteworthy differences between Montparnasse and Gavroche.

For the first: those two other gamins, which Gavroche has taken under his wing. They call themselves now Sou-vertu and Minaille and are twelve and ten respectively. Gavroche calls them his brats. He seems to have claimed them for his own. To Montparnasse, it is charming in its inanity. Do those two younger boys benefit Gavroche? Do they do anything for him? Do they steal for him? Can he send them on his errands, and pursue his own idleness?

The answer to all: no. Gavroche has had to teach them both how to eat off the streets of Paris, how to survive, how to speak slang, how to ferret about the city and dodge its dangers. None of it comes to them as easily as it came to Gavroche or Montparnasse. And when their efforts to find food finish in failure, Gavroche is the one who goes hungry for them. The older Gavroche grows, the less well this machinery will work.

The reader will remind themselves that unlike Gavroche or Montparnasse, neither Sou-vertu nor Minaille - the other Thénardier boys - were born to the street but acclimatised to it upon an age too old to pick up certain _gaminités_. Nevertheless, despite their relative affluence in juvenility, they cope well in poverty, both demonstrating much ingenuity. Sou-vertu and Minaille have begun to resemble their elder sisters, of whom they know nothing and who they will never meet.

Gavroche is no stranger to providing assistance uncompensated. His father, then his brats, then the Republican secret societies. And moreover, Montparnasse is certain Gavroche knows where old Claquesous is now, but where indeed? Gavroche keeps his secret for him. Why should he bother? What is he getting out of all this? Is it amusement? Is it something expensive? More importantly, could Montparnasse receive some as well?

The boy, it is clear, is not entirely heartless. How much is worth the heart? Montparnasse shall find out. Petty thievery for its own sake.

For the second difference, the reader is put forth instead to a description of a picture, as Montparnasse paints it.

Gavroche's deep-set eyes with their long, dramatic lashes. He does not even acquire spots upon those smooth, porcelain cheeks in summer, despite the heat and filth of the streets. Boreas in Paris - thick, dry, and harsh - oppresses the coif of all Parisians and must be conquered with oils and pomade, but to Gavroche alone, it is affectionate: it tousles his curls and they fall gracefully on his high brow beneath his ragged cap. His shorter stature, his lean limbs - symbols of half-starvation well-recognised among the poor of Paris - retains him a certain impishness and feigned youth. He could pass for fourteen, though Montparnasse has counted the years and Gavroche must be seventeen now. It is the wry twist of his full pink lips which betrays him. He is cherubic with a hobgoblin's soul; elfin with an incubus' face.

Montparnasse is certain he was never quite that fetching without even trying.

The impression this has upon him lacks the strength to engage the bellows of jealousy, and stimulates a separate fire.

 

**II: A Brief Study of Grace**

There is a phrase which before further proceeding is to the purpose to study in some small detail: _c'est grâce à la chose que_ ; it is the grace of the thing, that. What means the term grace? The grace of a thing is related to its form, its manner, its virtue, whatsoever part of the three it may possess; but it is neither the form nor the manner nor the virtue which bear relevance to this discussion.

The expression itself has come to mean 'thanks to'. Given the mercy, the favour of a thing, that was granted, it is through that mercy and favour that we come to receive something else. Upon reception, the thanks is extended. Quod erat demonstratum. The term is explained. What is it we receive for which we might be grateful?

Understanding. Truth.

The thing is gracious and merciful which permits understanding and truth, but so often do understanding and truth lack all grace or mercy.

So too may be lacking are those bestowing the mercy and favour - if it is a person, and not the world, famined for mercy and favour which the reader is already aware, for the world's ills are too many and its joys too few. And yet, these merciless may do us the favour of demonstrating, by the practice or their behaviour, the most important lessons. A message is received when we do so; wisdom is received as we do so.

It is to the grace of Gavroche's father - a rotten fellow, and while Gavroche cannot fault him for it neither would he forgive in a blind ignorance - that his eldest son knows what it looks like when people are trying to use him.

Montparnasse is trying to use him.

So long had Montparnasse faded from his Gavroche's life that he had also nearly passed from memory! Paris is titanic enough to permit each other's regular coming and going without any mutual knowledge thereof, though Gavroche knows Montparnasse must be aware of him. By now, all of Paris knows Gavroche, whether they like it or not.

But the day comes when out of a dream of a memory, the nebulous Montparnasse coalesces and re-emerges from the mists. He has Gavroche pressed up against the wall in the Rue Génin with his body, physically and now quite solid. Montparnasse's slender form does not permit much intimidation, but it is larger and taller than Gavroche's own and that is all that matters. Montparnasse leans into his person with his full weight pressed along Gavroche's person and makes casual sly mention of the things he has noticed: where Gavroche spends his days, and why; his two cares. Mere details. Well, what of them?

Gavroche wonders. If Montparnasse is trying to frighten him, it's working, though Gavroche breezes by the threat and bops it on the nose, as he slips free of Montparnasse's arms. Montparnasse cannot know whether his tactics are working before Gavroche has first figured out what it is he wants.

Assistance, perhaps? But with what? Montparnasse's former errands for him built upon his boyish stature, and the adolescent Gavroche is no longer such a small pesky devil.

For all his quick wits, Gavroche's pride must accept the blow of shame: it takes him too long to figure it out.

It is not until he is atop Montparnasse's sheets (in all likelihood, spirited away) in his bed (likely capered) in his small apartment (likely rented with stolen money) that Gavroche ceases to think of admiring Montparnasse's abilities, outlaw to outlaw, and begins to notice that Montparnasse is looking down at him with a distinct look of possession. Gavroche is shirtless, and Montparnasse's hand is caressing his bare waist.

He had wanted to know what it was Montparnasse wanted. Now he has the answer.

Gavroche is uneasy under the weight of Montparnasse's sultry gaze, pinned between him and the bed, but will swallow poison before admitting it. How many of Montparnasse's _petites dames_ have been in Gavroche's position?

But he lingers too long in uncertainty. It is the shock! Although, what is truly shocking to a gamin, or a former gamin? He has come across such tableaux before in the streets, a wealth of times between many couples. Sometimes he turns his head, other times he eggs them on.

Before he can manage to utter his half-composed reply, Montparnasse pushes him to the door and ejects him. He does not even allow Gavroche to retrieve the shirt he wore. This is no matter. It did not belong to Gavroche and he shall find another.

He realises how to apply Montparnasse to his advantage when he finds another shirt. He finds it upon the toilette of a pretty coquette waifling of a girl in the Boulevard de Javel, silly enough to leave her window open beside a well-climbed tree, but not so silly that she didn't catch him partly in the theft, and raised her voice about a scoundrel in her bedchamber before he fled.

Montparnasse believed himself rebuffed, that is evident. What is not evident is why he didn't use his wiles to seduce, influence, and take what he wanted, as Gavroche knows he is capable. It isn't the first time he has seen Montparnasse steal a kiss, or pilfer something a little more costly from someone a little less virtuous.

It must be that he thinks that Gavroche is too clever for such ploys!

It should not surprise him when he finds Montparnasse the following day with a girl, stained and stammering. He has her pressed up against the wall by the Rue Dubois, off the Boulevard des Gobelins, and Gavroche remembers the way that feels, the sensation of body heat. Montparnasse opens the bodice of her jacket, button by button. He leans in and kisses her exposed white throat and Gavroche shivers, breathing shallowly as he watches - then laughs to himself as he notices Montparnasse's wandering hand leave her hips to reach into her purse, utterly ignored as she sighs, heaves her body against his chest, clutches him close, and angles her pretty face upwards, more throat for Montparnasse to seize and besmirch.

He races away into the streets with an anxious thrill he does not recognise.

 

**III: A Conquest Precludes a Duel**

Later that night, Montparnasse returns three purses richer to the apartment on the top floor of No. 13 in the Ruelle Volontaire.

Three purses, and one overgrown urchin.

"Welcome home!" chirps Gavroche, as though the apartment is his. Montparnasse makes to speak but Gavroche interrupts, "Your porter let me in."

"There is no porter here," says Montparnasse.

Gavroche emits a theatrical gasp. "The fine gentleman has no porter for his manor? Ah! But lucky for you, I have become your porter. To let myself in." That irrepressible brat beams a smile of sunlight.

Gavroche is already in his bed, atop the sheets, reclining, balanced backwards upon his elbows. One long leg dangles off the side of the mattress; the other is bent in casual invitation, his bare foot tangled in the sheet. It has the effect of exposing himself. He is still dressed, though his shirt is left unbuttoned. It is a woman's shirt, no less, which is why he has not bothered with the buttons; the shirt hardly fits around his wider set of shoulders.

 _Crebleu_ , his mouth is dry at the sight.

"What do you want?" Montparnasse asks.

Gavroche studies him from head to toe, then says, "What you want, I suppose."

Montparnasse is pleased. His usual strategy - do not finish the job, instead leave them with much to think about and let them return to you for the finishing - has worked.

"You suppose." He removes his hat and sets it on a chair. "You're very certain about that?" he says.

"Yes," Gavroche breathes, watching him, and then he taunts, "besides, you can't give me nothing I can't take!"

"We shall see," replies Montparnasse, then proceeds to remove the remainder of his clothing, article by article, as Gavroche watches.

He climbs upon the bed, nude, over Gavroche, and puts his hand on his groin. Gavroche startles, but soon regains his composure, which he maintains until Montparnasse squeezes him gently through his trousers. Gavroche looks shocked at his own reaction. Is it the surprise at how good it can feel to receive this touch from another person, or how good it feels at all? Perhaps Gavroche has never touched himself like this. The prospect sends a pleasant frisson down Montparnasse's spine; that the street should teach him so much, but not this. In this, Montparnasse is teacher.

He unlaces the broken-and-reknotted strip of leather that passes for a belt and then removes the twine Gavroche uses for suspenders to keep up the rags he wears as trousers. On the second suspender, he pauses when he pushes it past Gavroche's shoulder, and puts his hands on Gavroche's smooth, bare, warm skin for the first time, to cup his shoulder and curl his fingers around it. He spends a moment in quiet appreciation.

With this grip, Montparnasse shoves him back upon the bed, and before Gavroche can regain breath Montparnasse is atop him, and he seals their mouths together. With a hand under Gavroche's back, Montparnasse pulls him roughly towards, to push the rags down his hips. He lets Gavroche squirm the trousers off a leg but not the second, before he has re-plastered himself back upon Gavroche's body, aligning their erections to frot them together. If Gavroche was shocked before, he is jolted now, and emits a soft cry into Montparnasse's lips.

Montparnasse proceeds with his fingers, but it is a hasty job. "What is that?" asks Gavroche.

"Oil," Montparnasse replies. "Surprised you didn't lift it when you came in." The pot was in full view, after all.

Gavroche squirms again. "Why?" he asks, sullen.

"Girls slip readily when they warm," Montparnasse explains, "you do not."

This, and Montparnasse's fingers, appease him for a moment. "You're getting it all over," Gavroche says at last, the admonishment eroded in the moan in which he says it.

"That's the idea," growls Montparnasse. The mattress can stain; it does not belong to him. Gavroche does.

With haste, he inserts himself inside Gavroche, pushing in a little bit at a time. The intensity makes him unable to wait very long. Gavroche's breaths are high and wheezy, and he has abandoned his pretext of keeping either his composure or his balance. Instead, one hand is clenched tightly on Montparnasse's forearm, the other arm wrapped around Montparnasse's shoulders, his legs around Montparnasse's hips, and he is suspended there, pinned by Montparnasse's weight upon him, as he is driven into from above.

Montparnasse retreats; then, thrusts in; and again. The force of each expels all the breath in Gavroche's lungs in one, who tries in vain to gasp it back in, and on the tail end of each exhalation is the faintest moan. Montparnasse rewards them with a kiss.

"Touch me again," pants Gavroche, as Montparnasse worries his bottom lip with his teeth. He does, as he pushes in, and Gavroche softly cries out. Gavroche throws his head back upon the mattress and relents, gives in; and as Montparnasse speckles his neck with kisses more teeth than lips, he tightens and spills in Montparnasse's hand.

Ah, the victory of possession! the pride of it! the surrender! the empire of Hadrian includes the youth Antinous; the empire of Hades includes the beauteous Kore. What a conqueror sees, he likes; what he likes, he wants; and what he wants, he shall not stop until he possesses! but to possess and desire the flesh; it is both a loftier and lesser goal. Lesser for its ambition; loftier for its pleasure. The conqueror of land casts the roving eye upon his goals; the conqueror of flesh casts the roving hand. Alexander cast his glance upon Persia in the morning, Greece at noon, and the eunuch Bagoas at night.

As he grips Gavroche's hips, Montparnasse drives himself into the tightest vise his erection has met and there spends himself with a low cry, watching the interplay of shadows from the feeble light of the window between Gavroche's hair and the mattress on which he writhes.

He pulls himself out and falls beside Gavroche on the bed, intent to relax, but his eyes tie themselves together at the lashes. He does not need to trust Gavroche well enough to allow his body to sleep in his company. Let him try to steal anything, Montparnasse shall delight in retrieving it, which affords them another meeting, and this much Gavroche knows. He falls asleep with his hand buried possessively between Gavroche's legs, his breath skirting over Gavroche's skin.

When Montparnasse awakens later, he is alone. Gavroche has taken his shirt, and in its stead left the girl's shirt. It is a calling card, it is a message, it is an invitation. He carries it with him over his shoulder, aiming to return it to Gavroche in exchange for something of equal or greater value. The thought settles with a warmth in his groin.

Gavroche also has stolen a knife, one of a pair which Montparnasse had lifted from the-devil-knows-where and god-knows-when ago that he keeps in his boots. He did not think Gavroche knew about these. Montparnasse learns of the theft when he finds the second knife of his pair outside on a fence in the Rue des Fourneaux. There, it fixes the following note to a wooden beam:

a shirt . . . . . .  15 francs  
trousers . . . . . .  four sous  
a belt . . . . . .  1 sou  
suspenders . . . . . .  1 sou  
you can afford these yet you cannot afford to stay up the night

Montparnasse raises an eyebrow. It is an amusingly-worded receipt, and he suspects Gavroche is still nearby to perceive his reaction upon reading it. He turns around to check -

"You!" says a voice, and a large bourgeoise strides towards him angrily. She slaps Montparnasse hard across the cheek and he drops the receipt. "You pilfered that shirt you carry from my daughter's powder room, you will return it at once! Gendarmes! Why, you inane fops know no bounds of morality, I shall have you arrested -"

A small crowd has gathered, so Montparnasse cannot _dispose_ of her as his custom. 

Through the alleys, Montparnasse perceives a single voice, well-known to him after last night's songs, at once melodious and atonal. Gavroche is singing a nursery rhyme with much bawdier lyrics, his voice carrying well. Montparnasse smiles without mirth and will concede it: it is possible Gavroche is cleverer than he had believed.

**Author's Note:**

> is there a trash bin? I hear there's a trash bin. please lead me to it, I am new here


End file.
